More quotes from my InRoads article:
Consider, for instance, the growth
in vehicles in Metro Vancouver.
Currently, there are 1.48 million motor vehicles. (Data here.) Over the last decade, that number has increased by 29,000 a year – 80 more vehicles per day, about three per hour, another car or truck every 18 minutes.
The average car length is about four metres. We would need another 116 kilometres just to park a year’s worth of cars, bumper to bumper – about the distance from the Port Mann Bridge to Hope along the Trans-Canada Highway, which is currently being rebuilt for billions of dollars to address congestion.
One year’s growth = 116 kilometres of parked vehicles
The most likely effect will be to turn Highway 1 into the main street of Fraser Valley suburbia, and lock the next generation into an auto dependent urban form.
Note the emphasis on dependent. One needn’t condemn the automobile – a source of affection since its invention – to identify the issue. The problem is the dominance of the car at the expense of other modes of travel – and the zoning, form of development and demand for the infrastructure that follows.
.
Perhaps your red line should be a line from Richmond to the Fraser Valley – given that car traffic into downtown Vancouver has dropped in recent years, and that it’s highly likely that (other than an increase in population) the increase in the number of cars reflects suburb to suburb commuting (or perhaps reverse commuting).